Where I'm Calling From

more—mostly about our mother and her problems —but, to make a long story short, I sent him the money. I had to. I felt I had to, at any rate—which amounts to the same thing. I wrote him a letter when I sent the check and said he should pay the money back to our mother, who lived in the same town he lived in and who was poor and greedy. I’d been mailing checks to her every month, rain or shine, for three years. But I was thinking that if he paid her the money he owed me it might take me off the hook there and let me breathe for a while. I wouldn’t have to worry on that score for a couple of months, anyway. Also, and this is the truth, I thought maybe he’d be more likely to pay her, since they lived right there in the same town and he saw her from time to time. All I was doing was trying to cover myself some way. The thing is, he might have the best intentions of paying me back, but things happen sometimes. Things get in the way of best intentions. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say. But he wouldn’t stiff his own mother. Nobody would do that.
    I spent hours writing letters, trying to make sure everybody knew what could be expected and what was required. I even phoned out there to my mother several times, trying to explain it to her. But she was suspicious over the whole deal. I went through it with her on the phone step by step, but she was still suspicious. I told her the money that was supposed to come from me on the first of March and on the first of April would instead come from Billy, who owed the money to me. She’d get her money, and she didn’t have to worry. The only difference was that Billy would pay it to her those two months instead of me. He’d pay her the money I’d normally be sending to her, but instead of him mailing it to me and then me having to turn around and send it to her he’d pay it to her directly. On any account, she didn’t have to worry. She’d get her money, but for those two months it’d come from him—from the money he owed me.
    My God, I don’t know how much I spent on phone calls. And I wish I had fifty cents for every letter I wrote, telling him what I’d told her and telling her what to expect from him—that sort of thing.
    But my mother didn’t trust Billy. “What if he can’t come up with it?” she said to me over the phone.
    “What then? He’s in bad shape, and I’m sorry for him,” she said. “But, son, what I want to know is, what if he isn’t able to pay me? What if he can’t? Then what?”
    “Then I’ll pay you myself,” I said. “Just like always. If he doesn’t pay you, I’ll pay you. But he’ll pay you.
    Don’t worry. He says he will, and he will.”
    “I don’t want to worry,” she said. “But I worry anyway. I worry about my boys, and after that I worry about myself. I never thought I’d see one of my boys in this shape. I’m just glad your dad isn’t alive to see it.”
    In three months my brother gave her fifty dollars of what he owed me and was supposed to pay to her.
    Or maybe it was seventy-five dollars he gave her. There are conflicting stories—two conflicting stories, his and hers. But that’s all he paid her of the five hundred—fifty dollars or else seventy-five dollars, according to whose story you want to listen to. I had to make up the rest to her. I had to keep shelling out, same as always. My brother was finished. That’s what he told me—that he was finished—when I called to see what was up, after my mother had phoned, looking for her money.
    My mother said, “I made the mailman go back and check inside his truck, to see if your letter might have fallen down behind the seat. Then I went around and asked the neighbors did they get any of my mail by mistake. I’m going crazy with worry about this situation, honey.” Then she said, “What’s a mother supposed to think?” Who was looking out for her best interests in this business? She wanted to know that, and she wanted to know when she could expect her money.
    So that’s when I got on the phone to my brother to see if this was just a simple delay or a full-fledged collapse. But, according to Billy, he was a goner. He was absolutely done for. He was putting his house on the market immediately. He just hoped he hadn’t waited too long to try and move it. And there wasn’t anything left inside the house that he could sell. He’d sold off everything except the kitchen table and chairs. “I wish I could sell my blood,” he said. “But